Monacan banker Safra suffocated in fire

Published: Sunday, December 05, 1999

MONTE CARLO, Monaco {AP} Billionaire banker Edmond Safra was still alive when firefighters arrived at his burning apartment, but he ignored their pleas to come out of a locked bathroom where he then suffocated, Monaco's chief prosecutor said Saturday.

Daniel Serdet told reporters that Safra's wife and the firefighters battled through thick smoke to try to save the 67-year-old Lebanese-born businessman who had barricaded himself and his private nurse in the lavatory for safety.

"The firefighters knocked on the door, but Safra thought it was the assailants and refused to come out," Serdet said, adding that the smoke billowed into the bathroom through the vent of a fire-detection unit.

Safra, founder of the Republic National Bank of New York, died early Friday as a result of the fire in his luxury penthouse in this quiet principality.

His nurse, Viviane Torrent, an American citizen of Filipino origin, also died.

The banker's wife, Lily, and the wife's granddaughter, who had hid in another room after a security alarm sounded, were unharmed.

Safra's nurse received two knife wounds in his stomach and thigh, and told the police it had been during a scuffle with two hooded men with knives who had burst into the apartment, triggering the alarm.

But Serdet said Saturday there wasn't yet evidence to back up the theory that two armed men had burst in.

The nurse was being questioned by investigators for a second time Saturday.

"There is nothing else for the time being that backs up this version that two men broke in," Serdet said, adding that any assailant would have "needed a key and a detailed knowledge of the apartment." The fire began in a waste basket inside the apartment. But Serdet did not say that the nurse was being treated as a suspect, and it was not clear whether the fire was deliberately set or the result of an accident.

Before he died, Safra spoke to his wife twice from the bathroom using his mobile phone, and in one conversation also told her to lock herself away.